Montebello, CA – Continuing arguments between the East Coast and West Coast raiding feuds reached another high point today when a member of the West Coast’s Shapeshiftas was found dead in his home on the south block of Cypress & Lakeview. Police responded to 911 calls from residents in the area saying that they heard gunshots fired at the residence. Upon arriving at the scene, officers found the body of 24 year old Tyrell Ricks, better known in the raiding scene as Bignastybear, shot 4 times to death.

Blizzcon 2011 was quite a blast, but unfortunately it’s all over. We can reminisce about the fun times we had and of course we can look back at all the photos we took and relive the experiences. And the best part of doing that is trying to determine what your favorite costumes were. Remember, memories are temporary but costumes are forever. Here are some of the greatest costumes I found at Blizzcon this year, as well as my own 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place picks.

I’ve also added captions to all of the pictures for those of you who aren’t familiar enough with Blizzard games to know who they’re dressing up as.

Thanks to everybody for making our Renegade Boozecon a success. That’ll teach Blizz to mess with the little man and try to use their power and resources to shut us out.

A couple of weeks ago I asked you to show up and occupy Blizzcon so that they know there are repercussions when they try to cancel smaller events like mine. I’m very proud to say that 26,000 people showed up to support my cause. Blizzard will certainly feel the force of this blow for months to come. To quote Chris Metzen:

They were boozing out all over the place. It was absolutely insane. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Thanks again to everybody who turned out. We’re starting to put our plans together for Boozecon 2012 and we can’t wait to see everyone there next year. Hopefully Blizz knows better than to try and get us cancelled again next time.

Yesterday we got a chance to play the pre-alpha version of Mists of Pandaria. No screenshots were able to be taken of course, so I spent about 16 hours going over every detail just so that I could make sure to give you the most accurate information.

The first thing you notice on the character select screen is that Blizzard has apparently decided to add a new race to the game. Not sure why we haven’t heard much of this from other sources, but this new race looks like an unusually larger scale version of the existing Pandaren Monk model (having trouble linking here, but you can search my older post regarding these tiny Pandaren).

Anyways, I started up the pre-alpha and in order to give you the most accurate update on all the changes, I chose to play a Tauren Druid. Since that is the class I’m most familiar with, it would give me a great chance to keep you informed on every single detail that has changed.

I’m very disappointed to say that so far, Druids are seeing little to no change in this version of the game. I replayed the starting zone over and over and over just to make sure I wasn’t missing something, each time with more and more tears welled up in my eyes. This is how a heart breaks.

All the exciting new talents we’ve heard about for 5.0? None, no new talents for us. All the crazy screenshots we’ve seen of the new Pandarian environments? Nope, we still start in Thunder Bluff. Exciting new features we’ve heard about in 5.0 like the raid finder and transmogrification? Druids appear to have no access to these amazing gameplay changes.

Please Blizzard, don’t let us lag behind all of the other classes. We deserve these new features as much as everyone else!

Blizzcon has just revealed that it’s releasing a feature many players have been asking for: player housing.

Due to system limitations, this feature will be implemented with a “time share” system in mind.

Lead Systems Designer Tom Chilton went into more detail:

To begin with, players will share a housing unit with 6 other players and they’ll be able to decorate however they like. We’re really excited to be able to add in this feature and we have many plans to add methods where players can collect objects to furnish their homes with.

Chilton went on to detail the system by explaining that each player will have access to the housing unit on one day of the week. This will be randomized each week so players won’t get stuck with the same day each time.

They also want to try and get more community relationships going. Each pairing will be completely randomized and groups will have to work together to ensure that they have a well-functioning household.

I’ll post more exciting news from Blizzcon as soon as it arrives. The information is flying at us here and I’m typing as fast as I can while also holding a flask.

Sorry if there’s bad syntax here folks, wanted to get this info out ASAP. I’m live here at Blizzcon and they’ve just announced the new expansion at the opening ceremonies here.

World of Warcraft: Tides Of War

Lots of interesting stuff going on in this expansion. It seems to definitely be centered around the Alliance this time. It starts with Jaina going overseas to find her family. Chris Metzen said:

We’ve been building up to this for a long while now. It’s time to put Jaina in the spotlight and the best way to do that is to return her too her roots.

With Jaina out searching, Varian takes the opportunity to start a campaign to retake some of their lost land.

But Sylvanas has plans of her own…. With the lack of leadership in Stormwind, the Forsaken easily take the city and leave Lordaeron, completely destroying their former city and leaving no trace behind.

Jaina finds her brother and together they begin to rebuild Lordaeron.

This expansion really seems to be centered around shifts in leadership.

The Goblins overthrow Gallywix and move into Gnomeregan using their superior technology to cleanse the area.

Gallywix finds solace in flooding Dalaran Crater and building an island casino in the center. (Looks like the insider info I tweeted during the line earlier was accurate!)

But like I said, this is expansion is more Alliance based. We get lots of deep introspection from Tyrande where we see her troubled by these changes. She forms the Cenarion Reclamation to try and enter the Emerald Dream.

The dwarf leader (I don’t remember his name, I’ve already finished one flask of whiskey) begins using the resources of Ironforge to attempt to reawaken the Titans.

The Tauren and Trolls don’t like either of these plans so they form the Bloodtotems to try and take Teldrassil.

Meanwhile, the Horde is having an internal power struggle. Thrall returns and wants to retake leadership. Garrosh doesn’t want to give it up so Thrall starts a campaign asking Garrosh “Where’s the birth certificate?”

Worgen find a cure and turn into humans.

Draenei get tired of being dicked around all the time so they move back to Outlands and take over Shattrath.

The Blood Elves are cool with this, it was kinda weird out there. The leader of the blood elves (again, don’t remember who) throws his hat into the race for Orgrimmar.

Sounds really exciting overall, looks like we were all wrong about Mists of Pandaria. Can’t wait for Tides Of War! Stay tuned for more gameplay info as the day continues.